Monday

Not only did Tropical Storm Ernesto* become the year's first Atlantic hurricane on schedule over the weekend, but after relaxing today he stands poised to be the first to become a hurricane twice--rare behavior symptomatic of Ernesto's really low wattage. He is expected to pick up speed again in the straits and eventually ram into the Florida's Atlantic tip. New Orleans and Gulf oil are heaving sighs of relief. In Chiapas, election officials have handed the gubernatorial victory* to the PRD candidate who squeaked by with a roughly four-tenths of a percent lead over his opponent, some kind of electoral narrowness record. In Mexico City's narrow race: federal judges held an all-day session today, rejecting outright many of AMLO’s 240 accusations of fraud (some directed at the selfsame judicial tribunal), virtually locking Calderon's victory on the sixth (and ending any chance of my not having to pay the hundred pesos I lost in election-related betting). AMLO, on the other hand, is setting-up* a "convention" to plan "civil disobedience" on September 16, which happens to be Independence Day. He has also uttered bondvillian intimations of conducting up his own "parallel" protest government. The world has a word for this: insurrection. If the election were to happen all over again, I don't think he'd again come so close to winning it, and I suspect he will not be popular enough to even run again in '12, but wackier things have happened. Like what? Well, if you have fifteen dollars in your pocket, a Mexican park is willing to provide you with an experience* otherwise mostly ouside of my standard reader's experience: the opportunity to simulate an illegal and traumatic entry over the US border, sans, I hope, all the fatal danger. Great. [Cavin]